i6 THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



was very noticeable. They quickly recovered, however, and 

 are now quite plentiful again. 



An interesting note on the nidification of this bird appears 

 in Neville Wood's Naturalist (1837, "• P- 166), where a pair 

 is recorded as having the nest beneath the leaves of a large 

 brocoli in the garden at Wentworth Castle, near Barnsley. This 

 nest was completely buried by the snow, which fell during 

 the first week of April 1837, but the parent birds formed 

 a tunnel beneath the snow over two feet in length, and through 

 this gained access to their young. A nest at Masham, in 1883, 

 was found in a tuft of grass in a boggy field, and in the spring 

 of 1903 an unusual number of nests of both this bird and 

 the Song Thrush were built on the ground, a probable explana- 

 tion being that, owing to the gales which prevailed in March, 

 the birds sought low situations. Many other instances of 

 extraordinary breeding sites might be quoted, this species 

 being of an aberrant nature as regards nesting ; but perhaps 

 of more interest is a case of dual occupation at Firby, near 

 Kirkham Abbey, where a Blackbird was discovered sitting 

 on four of her own eggs and three belonging to a Thrush 

 {Field, nth May 1901). A yet more extraordinary departure 

 from the ordinary nesting habits is related by the late Canon 

 Atkinson, who found a nest, which to all intents and purposes 

 was that of a Thrush, with eggs of an undoubted Blackbird 

 type, and it was not till the fourth egg was laid that the 

 mother bird began to line the nest, that then became typical 

 of its owner (" Moorland Parish," p. 342). In the last week of 

 December, in the unusually mild season of 1854, a nest with 

 four eggs was found at Sneaton Thorpe, near Whitby ; and 

 curiously enough, at Loftus-in-Cleveland, a nest and three 

 young were seen on Christmas Eve, 1865 ; while near Hawsker, 

 in the last week of December 1902, a Blackbird was disturbed 

 while incubating three eggs ; both these latter places being 

 in the vicinity of Whitby, one on the north and the other to 

 the south. Spotless eggs and others of a very pale colour 

 are sometimes noted, and a clutch resembling those of a 

 Song Thrush was discovered at Danby [torn. cit. p. 343) ; 



